Sucker Bets
December 16, 2003
by
Pete Jensen
Let’s abolish marriage.
That opened your eyes, eh? Thought it would. No, let’s – as an
exercise – abolish marriage. This is day one. Sex is something you
do for fun, because it feels good and you have that urge for it.
It’s the motivation for procreation! Can I have a hallelujah from
the congregation? Amen!
Whoops. We got us a pregnancy. Well, it’s mom’s. The baby, all
that – and all the responsibility. Men – no rights. No responsibility.
What to do, what to do?
It’s going to suck to be mom. Water weight gain, swelling, morning
sickness, getting so you can’t do the day to day things of life.
And, looks like you may have to go it alone. You’ve a mom and sisters.
If they aren’t too busy with their brood. (Uh! Men are out of the
equation! Keep it logically consistent here.)
Maybe you can do a Hillary, and have it take a village. Hm. Trouble
is, the damn village is all pregnant, or has brats underfoot. Who’s
going to hunt the food, and plow the fields? Can’t count on the men.
They’re out wilding about, making a living for themselves, and hooking
up with ya’ll whenever. Nothing in it for them. Maybe one or two
might want to come in and work for you for some of that old something-something
every now and again, if you know what I’m saying. Most, however,
aren’t. There’s no stake in it. Brat could be anyone’s.
But you know – those damn men are awfully handy to have around when
something needs killing or the heavy work needs to be done, aren’t
they? That damn bicycle is looking better and more needful all the
time…
(A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle, remember? Try
to keep up here.)
Let’s look up one of these guys in this alternate reality. Hmm.
He looks a lot like me. Handsome devil, isn’t he? Wait, she’s trying
to talk him into it – let’s listen…
Hey, I’m hunting and plowing all the damn day, and sharing my food
with you when you’re laying down with whatever guy suits your fancy,
and taking care of his brat? No, no. Pass. Now, if I could be sure
it was mine, and if I could be sure I wouldn’t have to compete with
other men for your, ah, favors, I might be interested. Bird in the
hand, you know.
Yeah, you’re worried about your kid. Women. I swear. Oh. You
also want something else? Now what? Oh. You want to be sure that
I won’t be knocking up other women, and sharing my stuff with them
and THEIR kids?
Man, there’s always a catch. Okay, I guess that’s only fair. So,
let’s get to knocking the headboar… Something else?
What do you mean, how do you know I won’t walk off when you’re past
childbearing age? Start another family, and leave you out in the
cold with nothing to offer? Would I do…? Okay. Whatever.
Hey! Wait a minute! Long as we’re on the subject, how the heck
do I know you’re not going to pick up and walk away with my stuff
and my kids a few years down the road? Huh? Some other guy with
a bigger farm, or you just getting tired of the same old?
Yes – what?!?!?! Listen! Why you…..!
Stop. Okay. Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll make this deal in front
of witnesses. And unless one of us breaks the deal, and is at fault,
there’s no backing out. If one of us just wants out, well, we walk
away with nothing. Break the deal, same thing. Deal?
Good. It’s a deal!
Ladies and Gents, what we’ve seen just created here, no matter what
we call it, is the concept of marriage. A meeting of equals, in an
agreement of equals, a contract if you will, with consequences for
defaulting. This whole concept has held together civilization for
millennia. Despite Hillary Clinton’s sniveling to the contrary, there
is no culture of any consequence that has used the “village” model.
Remove the whole children variable from this model, though, and it
falls dead on its prat. Without children, the whole foundation for
marriage ceases to exist.
Note carefully. It is structured around reproduction and providing
for the future. Love is not mentioned – it’s a bonus, but it has
nothing to do with marriage in and of itself. A perfectly strong
marriage, raising fine children, can be done with benevolent tolerance
of each other even if passion is lacking. It did so for centuries,
and still does. A romantic basis for marriage is a relatively recent
development, and in many places regarded as a silly basis for it,
or at least a frivolous luxury.
Marriage is about children, about raising them for the future. Parents
– real parents, at least – often sacrifice transitional happiness
and dreams for the sake of having immortality in the form of their
children. It’s work. It’s a deal, with rewards of companionship
in old age, and children to build home and family around. Break the
deal, and you lose all. At least, that’s how it used to be until
the Feminazis “fixed” it.
Feminists, their cousins the social progressives, and others of that
kind loathe and abhor this whole concept of marriage. For them, it’s
about personal fulfillment, and evanescent happiness. Don’t like
it? Not “gratified?” Away with it, then. But somehow they seem
to be the first to offer up the base canard that those of us who call
ourselves “Men’s Activists” hate marriage.
Nothing could be further from the truth. But what we have now in
the western world doesn’t really bear any resemblance to the above,
does it? We just hate THEIR concept of marriage, which is a total
bastardization of the original concept.
Most of this criticism does come from women, particularly besotted
young females with their heads full of silly notions. They allow
this romantic concept of some Prince Charming to take root, and center
marriage around them – their wants. Their desires. Their needs.
Them, them, them. Children be damned. Mate be damned, it’s all about
them, and if they aren’t happy, ain’t nobody happy. Such a concept
is short-sighted and selfish in the extreme.
Our deal is a ghost of what it was, and for men it’s a crock. Marriage
is one hell of a good deal for women, though. We’re cads if we stray
– and if our wives stray, we’re the cads who pushed them to it. We
labor in a role that has remained unchanged. Women have “choices.”
We’re expected to pick up more and more of their traditional slack
as the years go by. They don’t cook, clean, or take our names, we
patriarchal sexist oppressors, us. We leave the marriage, we’ve abandoned
our families. Women leave, we still lose our families, but we become
“Deadbeat Dads” (Even if our support is paid in full – or the we get
the “Disneyland Dad” moniker). We leave a child fatherless, and we’re
schnooks. Woman leaves a child fatherless and she’s brave and heroic.
Single mothers have a ready made sugar daddy to take care of their
housing, medical, schooling, food stamps, daycare and all in the form
of Fedgov, Inc. You a man? Go to work, slacker. Quit whining.
Suck it up. Why didn’t you leave those children with their mother
where they belonged, you bastard?
Ever notice that the person who says, “It’s a man’s world” is never
a man?
Run the numbers, sometime. Don’t take my word for it. Half of all
marriages fail. That’s a point-five. 70% of all marriages are dissolved
by women. That’s .5 x .7 which equals .35. 95% of the time she gets
the kids, which also means support and infrastructure – in other words,
the house, the car, the bank accounts. Don’t worry. You’ll get the
debt and legal bills. You aren’t walking away empty handed. What
could be fairer?
95% of .35 is .33. That’s a one in three chance of a man losing
his ass, and his kids, and being effectively indentured for ten to
twenty years. We won’t even go into move away moms and such. And
with 30% of all kids at last count being surprises from mommy’s trysts,
that makes it one in ten likely that you’ll be doing it for a kid
that isn’t even yours.
Go ahead, man. Use your calculator. Don’t take MY word for it.
As the great Foghorn Leghorn once said, you can argue with me all
you want. Figures don’t lie. You can’t argue with the figures.
One in three. Hell, Russian Roulette is 1 in 6. Even if you massage
those numbers optimistically, you still wind up with about a 1 in
4 chance of sweetie-pie kicking your butt out and putting the screws
to you. Let’s see, I put one bullet in, so. Close, spin, gun to
the temple…
Psych. One in six, though, and I bet you thought me a blooming idiot.
But hey, we’re woman hating, anti-family, child loathing Men’s Rights
Actvists, eh? So what do we know? Pay no attention to the Feminut
Schnauzer behind the curtain. We’re for undermining the family, and
are enemies of truth, justice, and the American Way.
GRRRRR! Damn Left-Wing Commie Scum! I’m so ashamed….
Okay. I’m over it. Sorry, guys. I tried real hard to feel guilty,
but what can I say?
We’ve all heard about the marriage strike. We’ve got your think
tanks, your pundits, your women, your social architects, and all kinds
of folk scratching their head and gazing at wonder at this phenomenon.
They’re all trying to explain it away, but I will be damned if a one
of them has come up with the obvious. I guess it’s too easy for these
mental midgets.
Okay. Very slowly. Let me break out the Crayolas. Marriage is
a sucker bet. Older guys come from a different era when it meant
something. Middle aged guys have been there, done that, fool me twice
shame on me. Young guys have watched their older brothers, friends,
fathers, uncles, and all other manner of men be put through the wringer.
They’ve been raised by single mothers, and heard them chattering away,
and tittering over “Sticking it to the bastard” and they want no part
of it. Shocking, isn’t it?
Could it be that men are just running the numbers and deciding the
risk-reward ratio just ain’t worth it? What a concept!
No, that can’t be it, they say. It has to be something else, they
say. Men are just commitmentphobic and immature, they say.
That’s right. You keep telling yourself that. God forbid we look
at the real issue, and actually do anything to correct it, though.
That just might make sense, and we can’t have that, can we?
DISCUSS THIS ARTICLE IN THE FORUM!